


everyday it's getting tougher to shoot straight

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: M/M, Other, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Socially Awkward Arcade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:06:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5944855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He adores Veronica and Raul, and Lily is harmless enough, but between dragging a drunken Cass into the elevator every other night and shuffling awkwardly through the kitchen while Boone maybe-sleeps maybe-watches, Arcade gets anxious. It reminds him of Freeside sometimes so much that he wonders why he bothered to leave at all.</p><p>(title of this fic comes from the song "strong black coffee" by jared mees and the grown children.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i couldn't stand to face you ('cause i liked what i saw)

**Author's Note:**

> in this chapter: a series of awkward conversations, misguided accidental flirting, and silent admiration of the male form.
> 
> chapter title comes from "like or like like" by miniature tigers.

Arcade sits hunched, back extended over a slowly-dying desk lamp, artificial light spread across the assortment of books and papers strewn across his work area. He is sitting as he often does on late nights, partly because any leftover ability from his youth to create a circadian rhythm has pittered out on him and died, partly because his crippling anxiety that only partially centers around the Mojave tends to flare up when his eyes are closed and his lights are off. (Something about the gentle blow of tumbleweed and the howling desert air sends his parasympathetic nervous system into overdrive; he scarcely sleeps unless he is passed out from the sweet equilibrium-seeking tendencies of sleep/wake homeostasis.)

He sits hunched, and only when he realizes he’s been sitting in the same position for a little over an hour does he sit up, spine cracking pleasantly as his vertebrae realign. It’s also only then that he notices Craig Boone in his peripherals, the glint on the sniper’s sunglasses catching Arcade's eye in the dim light and sending him near to jumping out of his skin. Damn it all, he thinks, if that man ever makes a sound, but then he starts using his brain and realizes that silence is probably a hard habit to break when one has sat in an uncomfortable position with a gun to his cheek for hours, maybe days. He forgives Boone.

“Sorry,” Arcade says, nervously, turning in his chair so that he momentarily face his company. “If I’d seen you come in, I would have offered you something. Coffee, tea, you know?” Both of them know very well that Boone can make his own coffee, and that he hates tea when Arcade makes it.

A long silence passes between them. “Are you always this responsive?” Arcade asks, because he’s at a loss for what else to.

“Yeah,” Boone answers, tilting his head forward with a slight nod, arms crossed tight over his chest. Arcade blanches a little, unnerved. Boone is an enigma, the only person in the Courier’s good graces that he has yet to crack, the one brain he has yet to file away a mental profile on. He wonders if that’s why he finds Boone so unnerving, that he hasn’t gotten him tucked into a neat little box like he has everyone else in the Lucky 38, everyone he sees anymore. He decides no, that isn’t it, because that doesn’t do Boone justice; he’s not a bad man just because he is quiet and reserved, it’s just that something about the way he takes a shot with not even a millisecond of hesitation strikes a nerve in Arcade’s inner Hippocratic oath.

After all, it’s why Arcade prefers to go with the Courier rather than stay in New Vegas with the others. He adores Veronica and Raul, and Lily is harmless enough, but between dragging a drunken Cass into the elevator every other night and shuffling awkwardly through the kitchen while Boone maybe-sleeps maybe-watches, Arcade gets anxious. It reminds him of Freeside sometimes so much that he wonders why he bothered to leave at all.

He likes routine, sure, it’s easy, but he can’t help but feel overwhelming relief when the Courier moseys over to him and gestures for him to come along. (He suspects the Courier takes him on the missions farthest out in the Mojave because he loves to look at the wildlife there, the flora that spreads just out of sight and could, perhaps, be of use to them in the future, when Stimpacks and Buffouts become things of the past, out of date because they’re out of stock. Or maybe they just like to make fun of him for getting sunburned, pink across his cheeks and on his nose. Probably a little of both.)

He really has to stop thinking so deeply, he thinks, which makes him laugh a little, which makes him snap back into reality. Oh, shit. Boone’s still there, and Arcade realizes he literally has no clue where he’s looking, if he’s even looking at him, oh shit. How long has Arcade been staring? “Sorry,” he says again, reflexively, because he feels like he should be sorry. “I started thinking about things and got distracted. I wasn’t trying to be all weird, looking at you like I was psychoanalyzing you or something.” (He wasn't.) He feels his ears turn pink, and he turns back around in his chair, staring intently at his papers. “I wasn’t, by the way. Psychoanalyzing you.” (He was.)

Boone shifts, thick eyebrows furrowing, and Arcade can hear it because his dogtags bump against his chest and jingle. “M’kay.” Arcade wants to explode. A striking conversational partner.

He wonders what the Courier does when they take Boone out, but then again, when Arcade himself and the Courier are out, Arcade fills the silence, his long-winded and one-sided conversation only interrupted by staccato orders from his mail delivering friend. _Stand back. Do you have a Stimpack? I can't carry anything else._ _Arcade, is now the time to quote poetry? I’m bleeding out._ He imagines it’s much more tranquil with Boone than with himself. Regardless, he will do his best to fill any silence he can. Including this one.

“Right then,” Arcade remarks, once again filling the room with the glorious sound of his voice, because any lingering pause between himself and someone with such a stoic face and concealed eyes makes him extremely nervous, makes his neck itch. “I hope you're enjoying yourself with, er. Whatever it is you are doing.” He turns back to his stack of papers, schematics for a suit of power armor amongst doctor’s scribbles and notes about a dinner he was planning to make for Veronica and the Courier as a welcome home gift, and also because the brahmin steak in the dingy fridge was going to spoil soon.

He absently scribbles a calculation in the margins of his paper, stifling a yawn. “If your aim is to subtly study my homely profile to paint a portrait, however, there are better ways to go about it. For example, you could hire me as a model.” He’s teasing now, but hardly thinks about it, because that's just how he breaks the imaginary ice. After all, it worked with Raul, with Julie Farkas, with even the Courier; his self deprecating humor is part of what makes him such a good doctor, too, he thinks, because it's easier to be stitched up by a shaky and unpracticed hand when you're laughing about his lack of social finesse. “Though I fear you may have a long debate with this suite’s inhabitants should you deem it necessary to hang it above the metaphorical mantlepiece. Maybe the fridge would do better for a picture of yours truly.”

Boone doesn't laugh, just shifts audibly again. Arcade also shifts, barely, so he can confirm that no, Boone is not even smiling, not even a twitch has appeared in his smile. Arcade winces. _Tough crowd._

Or maybe it's that he hasn't quite followed the obscure path that this conversation has taken, a distinct possibility. Could he be offput by Arcade’s choice of wording, taking it as a flirtatious gesture as opposed to self deprecation slash attempted humor? Arcade starts to sweat, and Boone cracks his jaw absently.

At last, he speaks, sending a ripple of relief through the room. “Naw, never was much of an artist.” He shakes his head, as if to expel some notion from his brain. Maybe a memory? “Not patient enough.”

Arcade raises his eyebrow, turning fully in his chair to face Boone, a look of disbelief. “Impatience seems like the worst possible trait for an NCR sniper. Especially someone so,” he pauses, face screwed up, trying not to offend with his distinct lack of military lingo knowledge, “recognized.”

Boone laughs, and had Arcade blinked, he would have missed it. It's a small one, an exhale of breath in a raspy _heh heh_ accompanied by the slightest twitch of his mouth. Arcade should be jumping for joy, should offer a toast to celebrate his accomplishment in cracking even millimeter of Boone’s cast-iron shell, but for some reason he is transfixed, focused on the obscure fact that oh, Boone has dimples. And a beauty mark. He needs a haircut, too, but Arcade notes that he looks better with his military-issue buzzcut grown out a little. It makes it look well lived in, worn and comforting. “I guess you're right, doc.”

And if that isn't just a novel idea.


	2. oh, come on, just one vice. (okay, it's vodka on ice.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boone wastes no time; he swipes Arcade’s drink from his hand and takes a long swig from it, nearly draining it. Arcade,wobbling and unashamed, watches his throat bob appreciatively. Cass shoots him a mean look. Soft men and all that. When Boone lets the glass bottle sit back on the table, he doesn't even grit his teeth. His jaw remains stiff and hollow, but he looks down his glasses at Arcade and his mouth turns up, just barely.
> 
> “You bartend, doc?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this time, everyone's drunk. arcade learned mix drinks because what else is he supposed to do during his time with the followers? ...work?
> 
> chapter title comes from "the stand" by mother mother.

Once upon a time, Arcade was written up for going down to the Wrangler, but now, he lives on the Strip, and the Lucky 38 is a hundred times better for getting drunk in alone, and there are no women in scanty clothes to avoid eye contact with at the meager bar. The Courier sits to his left, nursing a bottle of whiskey, drooling on the counter in panic, and the seats to his right hold Veronica, Raul, and Cass. Boone sits at the other side of the casino, boots kicked up onto the table he's occupying, beret pulled over his eyes as his chest rises and falls pleasantly.

Arcade reckons he isn't asleep, not really, just listening. He’s been watching Boone, maybe a little too much, but Boone watches everyone else, listens, and it makes him interesting. He’s always been listening.

“Say, Six, you think we could go back to Novac and see the dinosaur sometime?” Veronica is the source, still sipping on her first beer while she picks out and eats all the cheesy pieces out of the salty chips in the bowl beside her. “I want to get a Dinky toy for my bedside table."

Arcade’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he takes a sip of his beer, smile not quite reaching his eyes as he swallows around bitter, carbonated liquid. 

Six shrugs, and Cass snickers around her bottle, too. Everyone in the room knows they're not going ‘back’ to Novac, unless… well, Arcade prefers not to think about the time after the Hoover Dam. Veronica, Raul, Cass, and Lily all have formed a sense of belonging for themselves here, with Six, but Arcade and Boone never really did belong in the first place.

Boone will probably go back to Novac in a shoebox, he thinks. And then he takes a long, long, long drink of his beer.

Speaking of Boone, he sits at the top of the cocktail lounge in the 38 every other day, sometimes twice a day, watching the billowing smoke of the horizon and of the dam. He’s going to go. Arcade knows, Six knows, they all know. Boone wants in on the fight down at the dam, wants to show off the bear in him as proudly as the rookies that travel for recruitment daily.

Arcade never belonged with the Followers, or with the Courier. He’ll end up at the old Enclave bunker when the fighting starts, probably, and he’ll fight for an independent New Vegas even if it means against his old heroes. Even if it means against the Courier. He’d die before he’d live in a Mojave ruled by Caesar.

“Niña,” Raul says, almost as sober as Arcade wishes he was, staring down the neck of a bottle of Sarsaparilla that he’s poured a very generous amount of vodka into. “If the boss ain’t said a word in an hour, what makes you think they will just ‘cause you want them to?”

Arcade hums his agreement as Veronica slaps Raul’s arm. “There’s no telling whether this catatonia will last an hour or a day,” he slurs. “I should say our dears mailman and sharpshooter may have passed their respective alcohol limits long, long ago.”

Why he tries to be eloquent when he’s alcohol-thick is beyond him.

A chair creaks, and suddenly Boone is crossing the room, heavy military-grade boots _thunk-thunk-thunking_ along the floor as he does so. He slides into the empty bar stool space between Arcade and Raul, their shoulders bumping as he fits himself in. Arcade laughs, adjusting his slouch.

“I stand corrected,” he cries, joyously drunk. “The good sniper himself stands, and stands incredibly sober, all things considered.”

Boone wastes no time; he swipes Arcade’s drink from his hand and takes a long swig from it, nearly draining it. Arcade,wobbling and unashamed, watches his throat bob appreciatively. Cass shoots him a mean look. Soft men and all that. When Boone lets the glass bottle sit back on the table, he doesn't even grit his teeth. His jaw remains stiff and hollow, but he looks down his glasses at Arcade and his mouth turns up, just barely.

“You bartend, doc?”

Raul and Cass roar excitedly, gripping their drinks and clapping each other on the shoulder. Veronica occupies herself with drunkenly adjusting her pneumatic gauntlet, whistling innocently, and Six raises their whiskey flask gently in the air, not lifting their head from the Lucky 38’s dusty bar.

“Absolutely not, but I’ll do it anyway, just for you.” Arcade grins, slipping out of his seat and rounding the bar, leaning over to grab a few of the cleaner glasses from under the bar. Everyone knows Arcade’s the master of mixing drinks, once consuming an entire holotape’s worth of interesting recipes, all kept in the little notebook in his breast pocket. He doesn’t know what Boone likes, but it’s all probably bitter and disgusting stuff, so he rummages around for a bottle of gin that sloshes, half consumed by Cass no doubt.

He raises an eyebrow at Boone, holding up the bottle expectantly. Boone raises an eyebrow back, mouth twitching like they’re speaking a kind of secret language, and Arcade can’t help but have his stomach flutter strangely. Fuck no, he thinks, absolutely not, none of that shit, he’s just very drunk. Boone just keeps on smiling, unreadable.

Arcade pours him a gin and tonic. He’s sure they make them in the NCR and that Boone’s had about a million, but it’s all he can think of to make for someone he knows literally nothing about. If it was Raul, he’d pour an Atomic Cocktail with more vodka than necessary, and he’d give Veronica absinthe even if it was expensive because it made her shut up. Cass got whiskey on the rocks. Six got whatever they wanted, because Six gave him his own bed.

“Thanks,” Boone says once Arcade’s finished pouring, draining his glass in one go. Cass swoons, just a little. Or maybe she’s just close to passing out. Arcade’s swaying, too. “Not too shabby.

Arcade, stupidly, just smiles, hands on his hips in exaggerated pride. “You know me,” he replies. “Always eager to please, Mr. Boone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about how... like... disjointed this feels. at least, it feels that way to me. i've been busy working on things for classes i'm taking and it's taxing.
> 
> hopefully, the next chapter will be up soon. i'm thinking arcade may do something _slightly_ incriminating in the presence of our dear sniper.


End file.
